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Government – and by government here, I mean the civil government as distinguished from the church or the family or the individual – can’t do anything to improve the economy. It can’t create jobs, and for the president to continue to talk of such is nonsense. It can’t affect the climate, assuming that it needs any correcting; and it can’t bring about world peace – this should be eminently clear by now.

In fact, it should be quite clear to us by now that government really doesn’t do anything well. It blunders and bumbles and pretty much ruins everything it touches.

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So why do we keep thinking it will do something right? How many government-run catastrophes do we need to learn this lesson?

But here’s the more important point – the critical (legal) point from the American, Constitutional view:

Even if it could fix any of these things – which it can’t do any better than it handled hurricane Katrina – it doesn’t have the authority to do any of them. Let me be clear – for the Federal government under the executive direction of Barack Obama to attempt any of the foolish, impossible things he is promising is unlawful. Let me be as clear as possible. The president has shown himself a criminal by attempting to do that which is not authorized in Article II of the Constitution of these united States.

He is not authorized to spend money from the treasury for jobs programs – or for banking viability or for smart growth, or for undeclared wars, or for health care, or for education, or for energy regulation.

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How do I know this? I read the Constitution. Article I Section 8 lists eighteen areas where spending is authorized, and only if it’s for the general welfare–i.e. not for the specific benefit of a select few, or a certain subsection of the population such as the elderly, or those with children, or those with a specific disability.

Who keeps the president from breaking the law when he so brazenly declares that he will do so? Well, Congress and the courts are supposed to do this; but they don’t seem to know that they should, or they don’t care. In either event, they don’t do their sworn duty and stop him. Sometimes they posture and preen and – with the single exception of Congressman Ron Paul of Texas – then they go along with the criminality, in one way or another.

In fact, they regularly engage in their own law-breaking, oftentimes justifying it by expediency.

For example, Senator Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi frequently say that “Doing nothing is not an option.”

Well, sure it is.

In fact, in most cases, doing nothing is the only legal option that government has; and our experience has shown it would work.

Learn more about your Constitution with Michael Anthony Peroutka and his Institute on the Constitution and receive your free gift.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.